


do what’s hard to do tomorrow

by pixiepower



Category: SEVENTEEN (Band)
Genre: Canon Compliant, Friends to Lovers, Introspection, M/M, Pining, idolverse, jeon wonwoo navel gazing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-05
Updated: 2020-09-05
Packaged: 2021-03-06 17:53:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,148
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26282959
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pixiepower/pseuds/pixiepower
Summary: Wonwoo is no stranger to want.It’s just a matter of vocalizing it. Making it happen. That’s the part that trips him up.•Wonwoo is all impulse and no action. Soonyoung isn’t letting it stay that way.
Relationships: Jeon Wonwoo/Kwon Soonyoung | Hoshi
Comments: 23
Kudos: 234





	do what’s hard to do tomorrow

**Author's Note:**

  * For [weedhoshi (guillaming)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/guillaming/gifts).



> title from “just do it” by booseoksoon. #bsscomebackwhen
> 
> commissioned by nikita. thank you for trusting me! turns out i have met 96z! who’d have thought?
> 
>  **note:** there is some mention of characters being stuck in an elevator, but it is not heavily described, nor presented as a claustrophobic situation. if you need additional warnings please do not hesitate to reach out!

Impulse is a funny thing.

Wonwoo read once somewhere that everybody has impulses, and what makes humans different than other intelligent creatures is that they choose not to act on them. You stand on a bridge in a different country and your fucking lizard brain hisses, _hurl your phone into the river,_ and you imagine it in vivid color, staring down at the device in your hand until your humanity takes over and says, _well, we’re not going to do that,_ so you don’t.

Never mind that you have enough money to buy a hundred more Samsungs, your contacts and pictures are in the cloud, and there’s nothing but algae and trash in the river below.

There are things you just don’t do.

“Soonyoung-ah,” Wonwoo says back at the hotel. “Do you ever just… do something?”

Soonyoung turns onto his side, arm scratching at his stomach. His shirt bunches up a little under it. “Is this you pitching a BooSeokSoon comeback? We tried that. I admire the effort, though.”

Wonwoo laughs, which makes Soonyoung grin wryly. There’s a little wistfulness to it, a fatalism that they all share after enough time at the company. If they can’t joke about it here, with these people, where can they? 

And if they can’t joke about it at all, they’ll lose their minds.

“No, I mean,” Wonwoo tries again, gesturing a little with his shoulder while he chews and swallows a bite of galbi, “Where you don’t think. You—and shut the fuck up—just do it.”

“You do think a lot.”

After he says it, Junhui opens another container of takeaway, lifting more food into his mouth from his seat across from Wonwoo at the little table. 

The crinkle of plastic, the crunch of clamshell and styrofoam, is like a siren’s call. Soonyoung flops onto his stomach, his front half dangling off the bed, and before he can even say anything Wonwoo is pushing a chopstickful of rice into his half-parted mouth, interrupting the inevitable _boooo_ that would have greeted him for his choice of words.

“What is it you want to do?” Soonyoung asks around his mouthful.

He asks it like it’s a simple question. Wonwoo has to suppress the urge to sink into his own mind about it.

He’s already done more of what he’s wanted to do than he ever expected.

Impulse is, sometimes, auditioning for a company with shaky vocals and shakier guitar skills just for the experience of it and suddenly finding yourself training for four years and debuting as an idol, building a team and learning more about yourself than you ever thought you’d have to.

(Impulse is being seventeen years old and letting yourself feel like Seungcheol’s mouth on yours is your first kiss despite having had more than one girlfriend before you became a trainee. Consequence is knowing that that knowledge sits inside both your chests and feeling comforted by it even as you both move forward.)

Impulse writes your lyrics, sees your name in album liner notes, screams ‘make some noise’ without your mic in Newark and absorbs the cheers like you earned it, comes back to the hotel and peels the lids off tiny to-go containers of banchan and feels wiped out and wired all at once.

Impulse pays off when it can feed your family, and feeling lucky that the same thing can feed your soul.

Wonwoo is no stranger to want.

It’s just a matter of vocalizing it. Making it happen. That’s the part that trips him up.

“Ah, I don’t know,” Wonwoo hears himself saying, and some part of him hates himself for it.

There’s something in Soonyoung’s eyes when Wonwoo holds out another piece of meat that narrows Wonwoo’s field of vision. They’re all far past the point of telling one another when they’re going to the toilet or shower or another member’s room, and Wonwoo barely registers Jun stretching and heading toward the shower for the hang of Soonyoung’s mouth as he closes his lips around Wonwoo’s chopsticks.

It’s piercing, verging on thoughtful. Sometimes Wonwoo doesn’t know about all this tiger shit, but the ‘tiger’s gaze’ thing he’ll allow.

Soonyoung swallows, and when he’s done he looks settled, pleased. “Well, that’s okay. When you figure it out, you can tell me.”

  
•

They’ve never talked about it.

It started by accident; in New York last summer standing in a gift shop, everything black and white and pink and red and emblazoned with big hearts. It was all a little on the nose for Wonwoo, who at least was able to hide his face behind his mask for much of it, and his eyes even further behind his camera, until he caught Soonyoung’s eye.

“It would be funny if someone wore this stuff head to toe,” Wonwoo had said, letting Soonyoung’s laughter run up the back of his neck. “What would that look like?”

Soonyoung’s eyes flashed. “Can you imagine?”

Turns out he didn’t have to, because Soonyoung hurtled into the car to head to the airport in a flash of pink and black, curled bodily around Wonwoo in the backseat. The tourist outfit was wearing him, but he was wearing a grin wider than the Amazon River, turning the bill of the sickly-pink cap around so he could nuzzle his face into Wonwoo’s neck.

“I can’t believe you,” Wonwoo laughed, nudging at his shoulder for plausible deniability, but keeping his hand on Soonyoung’s thigh.

(Watching the GoSe afterward, where Soonyoung, cheeks rosy and cap pulled down low on his forehead, tossed hands with Jeonghan and Seokmin and whined when he ‘lost,’ explained a lot, but Wonwoo still thinks about the considering look Soonyoung had given him when they stepped foot in the airport.)

And now—

Wonwoo wouldn’t say it’s _escalated,_ per se, but he notices it now.

Between the two of them, Wonwoo knows how they’re perceived. Wonwoo is quiet, even as he’s opened up more than he ever thought possible, and Soonyoung is a troublemaker, or, at the very least, on the wild side, even as he’s sensitive and focused. 

But Wonwoo lets that little voice in the back of his head say, _what if,_ lets his own voice say, “What do you think would happen if—?” and suddenly Soonyoung is making it happen.

“What if one of us had bright red hair again?” and Soonyoung’s close relationship with the stylists pays off, Mingyu winding up neon just in time for the Seoul shows.

“Wouldn’t it be funny if” turns into “I can’t believe that” turns into _I want to go again._

Sometimes Wonwoo doesn’t even need to say it. It’s written all over his face. _I’m so fucking tired,_ his brain screams, but he powers through, until Soonyoung says maybe dance practice can end early for once. (Wonwoo doesn’t let himself linger on the idea that he’s really that easy to read. Especially in the practice room, the most dangerous place to let your eyes and mind wander.)

Impulse, instigation, indulgence, intimacy. What’s the difference, anyway?

  
•

Something is singing under Wonwoo’s skin when he walks downtown with Mingyu and Soonyoung, the concert in their rear view and the windchill chapping their cheeks.

The weight of feeling known had caught up with him as soon as they got here, where he stepped off the plane and walked right into the museum, camera in hand, to explore with Minghao and Chan. Absorb some knowledge, see some history before making some. Take pictures of some bones and think about your place in the grand timeline of the universe. Wonder if your footprint means as much next to ones left by creatures millions of years ago.

And he did all those things, with the white noise of gasps and giggles trailing them, cell phone cameras mostly replacing sasaeng shutters on this side of the ocean. It was still _fun,_ he still learned a lot, but it’s not the kind of thing so easily shaken, especially knowing that when they get back to the hotel it’s documentary filming, when they head to their next venue it’s documentary filming, when a handful of them walk through Chicago in the middle of the night it’s documentary filming.

So when Mingyu begs off, taking the team with him, the skyscrapers on either end of the bridge feel like they go on forever above him and Soonyoung, shoveled-back remnant piles of snow to their either side. The chill of it is crisp in Wonwoo’s lungs, or else it’s the pink of Soonyoung’s nose in the neon of late-night windows as they walk back toward the hotel. Jury’s out.

“Have you eaten?” Wonwoo asks in his best soft-spoken voice, gentle like with a shy fan at a fansign.

Soonyoung laughs, and it makes Wonwoo feel prouder than he strictly ought to. “What should I eat today, Carats?”

“I wonder what would happen if we just closed our eyes and chose a place.”

“Okay,” Soonyoung says, and before Wonwoo knows it, Soonyoung is breathing hot on the back of his neck, and two gentle hands are sliding over his eyes. “Turn.”

The shuffle is a little awkward, but Soonyoung knows how to move, and they’re practiced at moving together in all ways but one, and Wonwoo comes to a stop with his hand outstretched, Soonyoung’s hand is catching it, and the wind is at their backs.

There’s a lightness that comes over Wonwoo in the too-bright fluorescence, a feeling of freedom in this hole-in-the-wall when he and Soonyoung crowd into a booth and demolish cheeseburgers and steal fries from each other’s plates and speak hushed Korean to each other like it’s only them here.

“Tell me a secret,” Soonyoung says earnestly, looking at Wonwoo with his face wide open.

Wonwoo laughs, and even to his ear it sounds nervous. He picks up the red squeeze bottle on the table to give himself something to do, and the give of the plastic in his wired hands reminds him of something.

“I was probably too old when this happened for it to be funny,” Wonwoo starts, which piques Soonyoung’s interest, as he knew it would. He shoots him a half-grin, feeling sheepish, but there’s also a flame that flickers to life in his chest at having Soonyoung’s attention, at being the kind of person who can still surprise him. “I was maybe twelve years old, and—you know when your parents bought a brand new tube of toothpaste, how it looked so smooth and nice?”

Soonyoung looks delighted. “Oh, Wonwoo, you didn’t.”

He did.

It, as many of his childhood escapades did, began with a book. Wonwoo is certain now that it was supposed to be a cautionary tale, but at age twelve he read a story about a girl who squeezed a whole tube of toothpaste out into the sink and every time he entered the bathroom after that his fingers would tingle, everything in his mind clearing except for _get your fist around it and squeeze until you’re happy._

And one afternoon, an exhausting day of exams behind him, he didn’t have the faculties to tell himself why it was a bad idea. One moment he was staring at his reflection in the mirror and wondering if he needed to straighten his hair more thoroughly to look cooler at school the next day and the next moment his hand was sliding tight down the tube of toothpaste, watching minty-white paste extrude into the sink like play clay. He had sunk his hand into it, watching the print of it squish the paste around his splayed fingers, then smeared the evidence away, taking a shower to wash the stickiness out from under his nails but not bothering to wash the satisfaction out, too.

Shrugging, Wonwoo nods. “What’s worse is that I told my parents it was Bohyuk.” A scandalized, jaw-dropped look comes over Soonyoung’s face, and Wonwoo winces a little, continuing, “I _know._ And he was ten, and I was doing better in school, my grades, you know, so they didn’t even doubt me.”

He knows the guilt should probably eat him alive. And he thinks on it sometimes, he does, but he can’t manage the apology. Bohyuk hadn’t even _really_ gotten punished, not even made to use the toothpaste from a bag like the girl in the book. One night without a GameBoy might have felt like an eternity at age ten, but Wonwoo’s pretty sure his brother is over it now.

If he wasn’t, he probably would have heard about it from Dispatch or something. Idols have been canceled for far less.

“That’s a good secret,” Soonyoung says. His eyes are bright on Wonwoo, like he means it, and Wonwoo swallows thickly and grins.

He wonders if Soonyoung even has any secrets.

Soonyoung is so wholly himself at all times, in his boisterousness and his introversion alike. Wonwoo knows none of it is for show, either. For other people’s benefit, on occasion, but none of it is fake. 

Wonwoo is sometimes struck by the revelation that he is in a uniquely punishing industry surrounded by some of the most painfully earnest people walking this Earth. He thinks maybe that’s how they all survive, by showing their hearts and exposing it to the elements, hoping no one eats it in their ravenousness. Jihoon’s lyrics, bare and hopeful. Minghao’s art, every move a declaration. Joshua’s attentiveness, Chan’s ambitions, Mingyu’s kindnesses. Sometimes Wonwoo picks up a camera and tries to show them as they are, telling them how thankful he is that they are the family he’s doing all this with, with what little finesse he can muster.

Soonyoung is uncapturable in all his multitudes. Junhui said once that Geminis have a reputation for being two-faced, but Wonwoo thinks that’s a cruel and inelegant way of putting it. Soonyoung sees what people need and gives it to them, selflessly and completely and quietly.

When Soonyoung looks at Wonwoo he feels stripped bare and invulnerable. 

“I always wondered what would happen if…” Wonwoo trails off, fingertips pressing against the plastic of the ketchup bottle experimentally.

Following his eyes, Soonyoung’s elbows are on the linoleum table as he leans forward conspiratorially, hands cradling Wonwoo’s. His fingers are smooth and soft and small, and they nudge Wonwoo’s out of the way to grip the ketchup, thumbs and forefingers meeting around the bottle in a way that Wonwoo doesn’t let himself think about too long. “You dare me?”

The gasp Wonwoo lets out at the challenge widens Soonyoung’s grin, and his eyes glitter. 

Explicit encouragement is not on the table, but Soonyoung takes it as such, and a beat later his arms are flexing in his t-shirt and there’s a Vesuvius-level eruption of tomato sauce over their plates, their fingers dripping with it and the nozzle lid rolling underfoot.

“Fuck!” Wonwoo hisses, and tries to mask his laughter into a strangled cough when a waitress comes by and looks upon their table with tired and confused eyes, like she doesn’t know what to say to this veritable murder scene they’ve created. 

Frankly, Wonwoo wouldn’t, either. And doesn’t. He says nothing.

“Sorry, accident,” Soonyoung says to her instead in apologetic English, sweet and sheepish even as his eyes twinkle. “We will clean it.”

His confidence and charm melts over Wonwoo’s growing mortification and sticks to his throat and chest, and he soon finds himself wiping ketchup off his arms with singular focus, distinctly unable to wipe the accompanying tingles off along with it.

_ Wouldn’t it be funny if I told you— _

  
•

Wonwoo doesn’t like to press _door closed._ He’d rather let it time out, let anyone in who needs or wants to come in, and allow the doors to close on their own.

It’s late. The exhaustion is setting in even as the endorphins are still thrumming under Wonwoo’s skin, and he finds himself selfishly grateful that these last two back-to-back shows didn’t have extended stages; there’s enough cardiovascular exercise in the choreography without flinging their bodies down fifty meters of runway for a good forty percent of it. His knees thank him for the brief reprieve, eager as he is to get back to it.

They’re on their way back up, but the doors open and shut at their floor and neither he nor Soonyoung beside him move to get out. 

“You fly,” Wonwoo says quietly.

Soonyoung turns to Wonwoo, face open and curious, waiting for something else. The beginning of the thought, rather than what’s supposed to come next. Soonyoung always watches Wonwoo circle around, watches him sweat when he crosses the starting line from the wrong side. He’s always already out of breath when the gun goes off.

Wonwoo tries again. He says, “When you’re onstage, you fly.” 

_I want to know what that feels like,_ he doesn’t say. Soonyoung hears him anyway.

“I heard that if you jump in an elevator while it’s going down, you’re in the air longer, because you’re falling and the elevator is falling too so you’re falling the extra distance. Well, not falling, but. Moving. You know?” 

The elevator doors meet again in the middle with just him and Soonyoung inside, shoulder to shoulder.

“That… doesn’t sound right, but I don’t know enough about physics to refute it.”

“When you say shit like ‘refute’ I hope you know how sexy it is.” Soonyoung fans his cheeks with a hand and puts on a coquettish expression he stole from Jeonghan. It wears a lot different on his soft features, and Wonwoo’s laugh dies in his throat when he catches Soonyoung’s eye about it. 

“The construction of that sentence—”

 _“Jump!”_ Soonyoung says, and before he knows it Wonwoo is in the air, Soonyoung’s hand is on his wrist, and they’re laughing, breathless and weightless and together. 

Maybe it feels like flying.

A second later they touch back down, Soonyoung landing firm on his feet like a cat and Wonwoo wishing he had bent his knees a little more. Their chests rise and fall, and Wonwoo wants to say something, anything, but the sound that fills the elevator instead is a mean-sounding grinding noise and a series of beeps as the elevator hurtles to a stop somewhere between floors.

“Oh my God,” Wonwoo says, and it comes out incredulous, punctuated with another laugh, this one tighter than the last. He bends over and gets his hands on his knees as he keeps laughing, low and round and a little hysterical. Of course. Of fucking course.

What do you do when you spend your whole life afraid of the worst possible outcome? When you organize yourself so that you can step around obstacles, take the bright path through the forest, and end up on the other side unscathed but bored? You watch Jeonghan get laser eye surgery and yet you wear your glasses every day and the coordis make you take them off and you wave at what are hopefully Carats from the stage at Inkigayo. 

Soonyoung is still smiling but it’s waned from his eyes when Wonwoo straightens back up. “You okay?”

“Yeah, yeah.” Wonwoo eyes the buttons on the elevator board, _ground_ still lit up, _emergency stop_ blinking red. “It’s just—it’s just funny.”

It’s the first time maybe, that he’s genuinely meant it.

“In what way?”

“I don’t not do things because I don’t want to,” Wonwoo says, as though it completes his train of thought.

Soonyoung blinks, nods, arranges his game pieces at the start of the board, nestled right next to Wonwoo’s. “You like it when I do it.”

Point blank. Soonyoung is _still_ smiling. He leans against the handrail and tilts his head, gazing at Wonwoo with his temple against the wall.

“I want to do it,” Wonwoo insists. “I just—” Why can’t he figure out how to say this?

Soonyoung waits for him. Now and always, he’s ready, wanting Wonwoo to catch up, ready, bouncing on his feet, his hand outstretched for the baton. But Wonwoo doesn’t want to pass it hand to hand and get left behind.

_Jump._

“I want to do it with you.”

The look that graces Soonyoung’s face at Wonwoo’s confession stops somewhere perfectly aligned between bashful and beatific, and he says as much.

Soonyoung laughs, then, the apples of his cheeks shining like gilded roses. “Where do you keep all these words, Wonwoo? Do you have a vocabulary app? Maybe you can start sending me a word-a-day on KaTalk and I can tell you—”

Wonwoo swallows whatever the rest of Soonyoung’s sentence was going to be, one hand sliding up the back of Soonyoung’s head and coming to rest at the nape of his neck, thumb gentle on the hot shell of his ear. Soonyoung’s breath is sweet in Wonwoo’s mouth, his lips soft between his, and he makes a noise in the back of his throat when his body sways into Wonwoo’s that makes Wonwoo wonder why he’s ever waited for anything.

It’s that sound of something between a sigh and a purr that settles in the middle of Wonwoo’s chest, the tips of his fingers, that shoots his other hand out to tug Soonyoung in by the waist so he can kiss him deeper, Soonyoung’s mask hanging loose off one ear and his back pressed against the wall of the elevator.

Soonyoung has filled out over the years, Wonwoo would be a moron not to notice, but in that same breath Wonwoo has also noticed that he’s broadened to match. He notices it even more with Soonyoung melting soft against his angles and rubbing the instep of his foot against Wonwoo’s ankle like he can’t help himself. 

That, he gets. Wonwoo’s moving on instinct now, too, trusting his impulses, threading his wrist through the loop of Soonyoung’s mask, tugging it away from his face to slide his lips over Soonyoung’s jaw and over his neck and back up to his mouth, can’t stop running his fingers through Soonyoung’s hair, can’t stop, can’t stop, can’t stop. 

It seems like Soonyoung doesn’t want him to, either, the small intimacies of his hands dipping under the gather of his joggers to touch the skin on Wonwoo’s hips. The expression on Soonyoung’s face when he pulls away zips right down Wonwoo’s body. 

“I like _‘just do it_ ’ Wonwoo,” Soonyoung breathes against Wonwoo’s mouth, smile curling at the edges, before looping his arms around Wonwoo’s neck and giving as good as he gets. 

His enthusiasm sings through Wonwoo, like one of Jihoon’s best bass lines, like the pre-comeback jitters that never seem to go away, like waking up from kissing Soonyoung in his dreams to a clean-smelling hotel room in a different country. Wide-open with opportunity.

Soonyoung breaks away again to laugh, mouth all wet and pink. “I have to draw a line somewhere, though, and despite what you may want from me I’m not letting Americans catch me on my knees with a mouth full of dick, sorry.”

Wonwoo chokes a little, hoping his reaction isn’t as viscerally physical as it feels but assuming he’s failed when Soonyoung visibly revels in it, nipping at Wonwoo’s throat playfully. Soonyoung shimmies out from under Wonwoo’s body and catches his tongue between his teeth, staring at the half-lit panel with consideration before shooting his leg out at an angle and kicking the wall just above the buttons.

“Soonyoung!”

The grinding noise returns, and there’s a jolt, and the elevator slowly starts to glide downward again. The doors open on the ground floor, and Soonyoung looks at Wonwoo, pink-cheeked and sweaty. Waiting.

“Going up?” Wonwoo asks, and hits _door close._

•

“It would be funny if you did _everything,”_ Wonwoo says against Soonyoung’s neck, teeth gentle on the tendon there. It’s winter, but they have stage outfits to think about, and California isn’t nearly as cold as the other cities they’ve been to, and Wonwoo has always been aware of consequences.

Soonyoung whines and wriggles in Wonwoo’s lap, pouting a little. “I don’t know if _funny_ is what I’m going for, Wonu, when I get my mouth—”

“No,” Wonwoo laughs, cheeks going hot, “I mean during the intro ment tomorrow night. 10:10, horanghae, prince. Everything. I want to see it. See how long it can last.”

“If you’re trying to make this not sound horny you’re doing a bad job.” Soonyoung rolls his hips teasingly and Wonwoo grunts in reply, flipping Soonyoung onto his back just to watch him giggle in surprise.

Laughter cradles him like the hotel sheets below, his hair fanning out around him, and Wonwoo leans down to kiss him.

He doesn’t hesitate.

And when Soonyoung spends what feels like fifteen full minutes sprinting around the stage screaming his own catchphrases in Los Angeles, Mingyu complaining all the while, Wonwoo hears the deafening cheers, lets himself grin, and thinks no consequence can be more important than Kwon Soonyoung drenched in sweat and turning back to beam at him.

**Author's Note:**

> thank you for reading!
> 
> find me on [twitter](http://www.twitter.com/pixiepowerao3) and [curiouscat](http://www.curiouscat.me/pixiepower/)!


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